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Notes and Comment Nocturne Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you flJI삛 Like a teatray in the sky -the Mad Hatter, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Bats, despite lurid tales of vampires that feed on your neck, are for the most part harmless little creatures that simply like to eat at night. This cabinet, permeated by imagery of bats, was made by a pair of California woodworkers for a show at the William Zimmer Gallery in Mendocino, Calif. Time was the theme of the show (the daytime of bats being nighttime). It was inspired by the Mad Hatter's poem at left. Built of Honduras mahogany, with bats and other details of cocobolo, the cabinet is a skillful synthesis of fine joinery, inlay and carving in the round. Flying into the dusk as bits of inlay on the doors, two of the bats emerge from perspective into basrelief, and two more flap completely into three dimensions as the pulls. A bat is even expressed as shadow in the silhouette scroll-sawn in the faces of the drawers. The piece, now in a private collection, was made by Sarah Wheaton of San Jose, Calif., and David Moore of Willetts, Calif., collaborating as Noctiluca Studios (noctiluca means "night-blooming, phosphorescent plankton")' The cabinet was designed to contain a tea service, for use at "tea time." It might be a good idea to hang a braid of garlic in there, too. Like a bat cave, the interior of this tea service cabinet (left) is a mysterious place to secure something of value. Inlaid bats fly from two dimensions into three (right). - Eggplant harpsichord When he saw the 20-year-old kit-built harpsichord, he knew it was beyond repair; it needed a complete rebuild. Lewis Schultz, a photographer and sometime harpsichord builder, quoted a price and offered to buy the instrument for parts. Soon the harpsichord was in his shop. There was no sense in returning the kit- built harpsichord to its original condition, he reasoned. "It's just another French double," he said. "There are thousands of them. Let's do something different." Schultz'S rebuilt harpsichord became a hybrid of a modern kit and classical technology. Much of the case and action were simply repaired, but the parts that have to do with sOllnd were rebuilt according to the designs of Pascal Taskin, a Parisian harpsichord maker of the late 18th century.. The cracked soundboard was replaced with a thicker one built of quartersawn This harpsichord began life as a kit. Rebuilt to sound like a period instrument, it looks like nothing else. Top photos: Glenn Gordon; bottom photo: Lewis Schultz Glenn Gordon, St. Paul, Minn.